This invention relates to household refrigerators and in particular to the crisper drawer structure for a household refrigerator.
Conventional refrigerators commonly include a freezer compartment, a fresh food compartment and an access door for each of these compartments. The fresh food compartment conventionally includes one or more crisper drawers located in the bottom of the fresh food compartment. The drawers are conventionally slideably carried on supports so as to permit the drawers to be drawn forwardly out of the fresh food compartment when the access door of the fresh food compartment is opened, thereby providing user access to vegetables and other foods stored in the crisper drawers. In order to maintain the crispness of stored food, the top of the drawers is closed when the drawers are in their storage position within the fresh food compartment. In view of the desire by consumers to store many types of fresh food in such crisper drawers, it is desirable to provide multiple drawers in a side by side arrangement. Such drawer structures have been provided in the prior art. In such prior art structures, a nonadjustable drawer arrangement has been provided so that the drawers could not be adjusted to suit the desire or needs of particular consumers. However, it is desirable to offer the consumer various side by side drawer arrangements such as for instance a single wide drawer, a narrow drawer and a medium width drawer, or three narrow drawers so that the consumer can choose the drawer arrangement to suit his needs.
It is therefore desired to provide an adjustable drawer arrangement for a refrigerator wherein various arrangements of drawers may be provided by means of a common support structure. It is furthermore desired to provide a flexible drawer arrangement and a support structure which is rugged and will support heavily loaded drawers.
In many prior art refrigerator structures, the access door to the fresh food compartment includes shelves on its inner surface for storage of articles to be refrigerated. In many refrigerator installations, the door of a refrigerator may not be opened more than 90.degree., thereby causing interference with the drawers if the drawers are to be withdrawn completely from the fresh food compartment. It is therefore desired to provide an adjustable refrigerator drawer structure wherein the drawers may be removed from the fresh food compartment without interference with the door even though the door cannot be opened more than 90.degree.. Furthermore, it is desired to provide an adjustable refrigerator drawer structure wherein the entire drawer structure may be removed for cleaning.